


In the Cold Dark Earth

by hopelessbookgeek



Series: Gold-Lie Promises [6]
Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter/Funhaus RPF
Genre: Female Jack, GTA AU, Gen, The plot marches on
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-07
Updated: 2017-03-14
Packaged: 2018-09-30 07:41:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,726
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10157762
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hopelessbookgeek/pseuds/hopelessbookgeek
Summary: The crew all meets together for the first time.





	1. The Fire Rages

**Author's Note:**

> This part will be two-chaptered; this one from Michael's perspective, the second from Geoff's, which will detail his private conversation with the Vagabond. In addition, we're nearing the end!

At four fifty-seven, Michael Jones shrugged on his leather jacket and pocketed his phone. “I’m out,” he said to Ray, who had his headphones in. Michael waved to get his attention, and when Ray had pulled one earbud out, he repeated himself. “I’ll be back later, probably. I’ll text you when I know.”

“Oh, okay. Party?”

“Yeah,” Michael lied smoothly. “Don’t wait up for me, Dad.”

Ray snorted and turned his music back up and Michael left, with just enough time to sprint a few blocks down to the subway stop that would take him downtown. The night was chilly, but his blood had always run hot– too hot, strictly speaking. He took a seat next to a man with scars on his knuckles, across from a young pregnant girl who wouldn’t meet his eyes.

The subway car was mostly filled with businessmen. They looked nothing like each other, and yet they were strangely identical. Michael just sunk into his seat and stared at the dirty floor, the train’s motion rumbling in his chest and making his teeth chatter.

At five twenty-one, he shouldered through the suits and took the steps up to the street two at a time. In this part of town, people could park on the street without worrying about getting their cars stolen, and the cars were worth more than Michael would ever see in his lifetime– hundreds of thousands of dollars. He spotted an Adder parked beside a bicycle and knew, glumly, which one he would be sat on in a year, in five years.

He was buzzed with silence into a tall glass-sided skyscraper and passed the security guard behind the desk, who gave him a look he was all too familiar with: _you don’t belong here_. His temper welled up like bile, hot and burning, and he was tempted to snap like a kicked dog, but for once common sense won out and he took the elevator up to the tenth floor, leaving nothing behind but a scalding glance and unpleasant vibes.

At five twenty-nine exactly he knocked on number eleven, and was let in by a tall man in a black-and blue jacket and a black skull whole-head mask. Michael couldn’t tell who it was, couldn’t put a face to the voice on the phone, and could see only the eyes behind the mask: stunning pale blue rimmed in black paint.

“You’re just in time,” said the Vagabond, his voice a honey-smooth boom. “Come in. Would you like a drink?”

“I–” Michael Jones had never been speechless before, and swallowed back his uncertainty. “Beer, if it’s cool.”

There was a case on the table, and Michael cracked open a can before he could face the rest of the room. There sat Geoff, in a suit that had seen better days, with fear in his eyes that didn’t match the petulant set of his mouth; beside him Jack, looking sullen and drawn, her red hair limp around her shoulders; and there on the chair beside the TV–

“ _Gavin?”_ he yelped. Gavin’s eyes on him were round as saucers. “What the fuck are you doing here?”

“ _Michael?_ I never thought I’d…”

“Oh, look how acquainted we are,” the Vagabond purred. “I’m so pleased I don’t have to make any introductions.” His tone made it quite clear it was no accident, and absently Michael wondered how on Earth the Vagabond could have known that he and Gavin had once fucked in Jack’s bar. He hadn’t deleted Gavin’s number from his phone, but nor had he so much as texted him since their encounter; in truth he’d all but forgotten about the kid. What was skinny, meek Gavin going to do in a gang in the most dangerous city on the West Coast?

Michael sat uneasily in the chair beside Gavin’s as the Vagabond paced the room slowly, his hands clasped behind his back. “Now,” he said, “I’ve been in a sort of tough situation for the past year or so. My plans require more than one person to carry out, and I’ve found myself in an unfortunate lack of a crew to carry them out, as all my friends have had the indecency to die or get arrested. I’ve been stuck with a sort of riddle: what do you get when you add the five most talented, dangerous criminals in Los Santos?”

There was silence before Geoff said “us?” with his eyebrows quizzically pulled together, like a child trying to please a tempestuous teacher.

The Vagabond laughed, and it was the sound like shattering glass. “Not at all, and that’s much the trouble. When the five most dangerous men in the most dangerous city team up, even the idiot police force must sit up and take notice, and that underground gang will not stay underground before long. As I’ve said– my best are dead or caught. So instead I have _you_ – you who are here not because you’re the best, the smartest, the most bloodthirsty, but because I have something you need, or something I can use against you. You are pawns in the city I rule, gentlemen. Best learn to _kneel_.”

He seemed to look at Michael at the last word, and he bit his lip to keep it from curling in distaste. “For example,” he said, eyes still on Michael, “you yearn to take power and use it. You want to feel blood on your hands, the way a gun recoils against your shoulder. You are like me.”

 _I am nothing like you_ , he wanted to spit, but the acid on his tongue and the instinctive curl of his hands into fists made him a hypocrite, so he seethed in silence. The Vagabond’s eyes flicked to Geoff and Jack. “I have _your_ financial history,” he said to Geoff, “and _your_ medical history,” to Jack. If it upset her, she gave no sign of it, but Geoff looked as though he’d been slapped, and the fear in his eyes melted to anger. To Gavin the Vagabond only smiled. “You know what you’ve done,” he said simply, and Gavin paled.

“I have others lined up,” he continued, more to empty air than to his would-be crew. “I need a sniper, there’s someone I’m working on for that… There’s a photographer, lives on the outskirts, he’s been a contact for years, and a sheriff at the police station, she knows what to look for… It’s not truly us five against the world.” He smiled again, but smaller, just the corners of his mouth tipping up like he was sharing a private joke with himself. “This is not our Thermopylae.”

There was silence while everyone thought it all over. “But,” Gavin said, tentative and soft, “why are we here? If you can blackmail or persuade us into joining, what’s the point of this meeting?”

“Why, I wanted to meet you all in person. Soon we’ll be fighting shoulder-to-shoulder. Shouldn’t we be face-to-face as well?” He threw back his head and laughed, the chilling laugh of a madman. “And in case any of you were thinking of betraying me, this is my ninth crew. I have outlasted every man who has tried to best me. My world is not kill or be killed. It is only kill.”

Geoff craned his head to look the Vagabond in the eye, and Michael admired the odd sort of courage it took to do that. “Can I speak to you privately?”

“Why, of course,” said the most dangerous man in the country. “Feel free to talk amongst yourselves.”

Geoff squeezed Jack’s hand and followed the Vagabond into a side room, and when the door closed behind them, Gavin turned to Michael. “Where have you been? I thought I’d have heard from you.”

Michael remembered his beer and took a sip, stalling for time. “I don’t know,” he admitted.

“You… don’t know where you’ve been?”

“I don’t know why I haven’t called you.” _Do you think about me? I don’t think about you._ But he thought of him now, that way he had of sweeping his eyes with every movement, the nervous tapping of his fingers but the evenness of his voice. And he thought about their only meeting, the way Gavin’s fine tan skin had bruised under his touch, pretty purple flowers on his spine and hips and neck… If Michael Jones had to damage something, he might as well make it beautiful.

“You didn’t _have_ to. We barely knew each other, we were…”

“Are you talking about the time you fucked in my bathroom?” Jack said. “Because you’re talking about it like it’s some beautiful lost love, when all you did was cry about your exes and drunkenly hump against my sink.”

“Oh, fuck off,” Michael complained. “Are you still so fucking bitter because your boyfriend fucks other men while you’re somewhere else?”

If he thought that would piss her off, he didn’t know Jack, and she laughed. “My boyfriend can do whatever he wants when we’re apart. He comes home to me. You can’t send a text message. Who’s more pathetic here?”

“Life interrupted,” he mumbled in Gavin’s general direction. “You wanna make up for lost time?”

Gavin’s eyes flickered to the closed door. “He’ll kill us.”

Michael shrugged. “He’ll try,” he said, and leaned in for a kiss.


	2. Protector

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> MKAY, so this is what Geoff was up to where the last chapter left off.

When Geoff was five, his mother took him off the island to the mainland, and to the zoo. It was feeding time for the jaguars, and he got to watch, wide-eyed, as the beast leapt from the tree in its enclosure on the pile of meat on the ground below: muscles rippling under its skin, fur dappled by the sunlight, teeth white and heavy when it opened its mouth. It was beautiful, he thought, and his mother tried to get him to look away from the carnage but he was curious as children are, and it was beautiful.

It was the jaguar he thought about as his eyes followed the Vagabond’s pacing. Under the mask he was no doubt a nobody, but he cut a striking figure, his denim-clad legs long, his shoulders broad under the leather coat, his belly flat and waist narrow. Objectively, his eyes are lovely, wide and blue with thick buttery lashes, but they’re too sharp, they’re broken glass; Geoff didn’t like meeting his gaze. “You are pawns in the city I rule, gentlemen. Best learn to _kneel_.”

The room was warm, almost hot, but Geoff shivered.

““For example,” he said, turning his eyes to Michael, who clutched his beer like a lifeline, “you yearn to take power and use it. You want to feel blood on your hands, the way a gun recoils against your shoulder. You are like me.”

Michael himself recoiled at the words, and his eyes flashed dangerously, but he ground his teeth and held his tongue. Geoff knew why when the Vagabond looked back at him and Jack. He took her hand and she squeezed it lightly for reassurance. “I have _your_ financial history,” he said to Geoff, which was no surprise. He was notoriously bad with money and his youthful excesses had caught up with him. With his limited income all going to Jack’s medical bills, he was in debt, a considerable amount of debt, and the promise of greater rewards was the only reason he came here.

“And _your_ medical history,” he said to Jack, and that made Geoff sit up and take notice. If he were a braver man, he would have leapt up immediately with some outraged declaration. _How dare you_ , perhaps. But Geoff was not a brave man, and he couldn’t openly object without Michael and Gavin wondering what exactly he was objecting to. And Jack was the object of the scorn; it was she who had the right to be offended, but she bore the veiled threat with quiet, stoic grace. Geoff supposed she had heard worse.

He brooded while the Vagabond threatened Gavin and went on about… something. The more he thought, the angrier he became. How could he? How did he _dare?_ Of course, he had no reason not to think he could. He was the most powerful man in the city, strictly speaking, and had a way of speaking that made you want to listen. Of course he would think he could get away with anything.

But he had never seen what happened to someone who got between Geoff and Jack.

When the Vagabond stopped to breathe, Geoff looked him dead in the eye, fearless and stupid. “Can I speak to you privately?”

“Why, of course,” he said, smooth as silk. “Feel free to talk amongst yourselves.” Geoff gave Jack’s hand a squeeze in thanks for the one she’d given him before, and he followed the Vagabond through the living room into a side room– a spare bedroom. The Vagabond’s legs were long and his strides were smooth; Geoff couldn’t help but compare his somewhat haggard stance.

It was almost jealousy that sparked the tinder of his foul mood, and he rounded on the Vagabond as soon as they were alone with the door shut tight behind him. “How dare you?”

The Vagabond smiled, and that was worse than anything, somehow. “I knew what you needed, Geoff Ramsey. I knew you needed money, and I know what you’ll put up with to get it.”

“I don’t give a _fuck_ about what you say or do to me! I’m talking about _Jack!_ How dare you make cracks about her medical history in front of everyone?”

“Oh,” he purred in apparent surprise, although Geoff knew it was feigned. “So no one knows that she isn’t who she says she is.”

“They fucking know enough, you piece of shit. They know who she is.”

“Well, they might want to know more…”

Geoff grit his teeth, half-bared like that jaguar, a warning. “I don’t fucking care what anyone else would want to know. Her medical history is her business, and mine. It isn’t _yours_ , it certainly isn’t fucking _Gavin Free’s_. You can’t blackmail her if she’s _dead_ , you son of a bitch. You tell everyone she’s trans and you’ll get her killed, and then neither of us are any use to you.”

The Vagabond seemed to consider that. “That’s why it’s blackmail. If I had no hold over her, it wouldn’t work. It’s really quite a simple concept.”

“You had better not break your end of the bargain, then.”

The Vagabond looked at him with eyes like burning matches, but Geoff didn’t back down. “Nor you yours. This is our détente, Mr. Ramsey.”

“I agreed to nothing,” he snapped, folding his arms, but it would have to do. He couldn’t let her down. After everything else he’d done to her, he couldn’t let her down in this. “I’m here, aren’t I? I’ll join your damn gang. But I _swear_ to you, if I find out that _anyone_ but you or I knows about her history, you’ll die by inches.”

It was incredibly unwise to threaten someone like the Vagabond, who had outlived nine crews and could easily outlive this tenth. But he would face the Vagabond, he would go back and face that damn jaguar, to know that she would be safe at the end of it.

“You’re curiously protective of her. I’m sure she can handle herself.”

“It’s not about that. She’s my _wife_.”

He nodded, once, curt, like a pact had been sealed or an understanding reached. Geoff dreaded to consider which it might be. “You’ll be better in my favor if you do something for me. Run an errand.”

_I’m not your fucking messenger boy_ , he almost said, but he wasn’t _that_ stupid, so he only nodded.

“Take a message to a prospective crew member of mine. I would contact him myself, but he doesn’t want his… friends to know what he’s considering. You would like him, I think. There’s a lot of anger in him too.”

“Just tell me what you want me to say to him.”

“Say? Oh, nothing. Bring him a letter.” He took an envelope from an inside pocket of his jacket. It had no return address or stamp, just the letter V in the top right corner and a name across the front like a birthday card. Geoff took it with hands he wished weren’t shaking and glanced it over.

“Who the fuck is Ray?”


End file.
